THE PARLIAMENT OF PARIS

[233] IN the streets of Paris all was tumult and fiery indignation. Never had there been a more sudden or violent
outbreak. The whole city seemed to have turned into the streets. Not until the era of the Revolution, a
century and a half later, was the capital of France again to see such an uprising of the people against the
court. Broussel had been arrested, Councillor Broussel, a favorite of the populace, who sustained him in his
opposition to the court party, and at once the city was ablaze; for the first time in the history of France
had the people risen in support of their representatives.

It was by no means the first time that royalty had ended its disputes with the Parliament in this summary
manner. Four years previously, Anne of Austria, the queen-regent, had done the same thing, and scarce a voice
had been raised in protest. But in the ensuing four years public opinion had changed. The king, Louis XIV.,
was but ten years old; his mother, aided by her favorite minister, Cardinal Mazarin, ruled the
kingdom,—misruled it, as the people thought; the country was crushed under its weight of taxes; the finances
were in utter disorder; France was successful abroad, but her successes had been dearly bought, and the people
groaned under the burden of their victories. Parliament made itself the mouth-piece of the public
[234] discontent. It no longer felt upon it the iron hand of Richelieu. Mazarin was able, but he was not a master,
and the Parliament began once more to claim that authority in affairs of state from which it had been deposed
by the great cardinal. A conflict arose between the members and the court which soon led to acts of open
hostility.

An edict laying a tax upon all provisions which entered Paris irritated the citizens, and the Parliament
refused to register it. Other steps towards independence were taken by the members. Gradually they resumed
their old rights, and the court party was forced to yield. But courage returned to the queen-regent with the
news that the army of France had gained a great victory. No sooner had the tidings reached Paris than the city
was electrified by hearing that President Brancmesnil and Councillor Broussel had been arrested.

It was the arrest of Broussel that stirred the popular heart. Mazarin and the queen had made the dangerous
mistake of not taking into account the state of the public mind. "There was a blaze at once, a sensation, a
rush, an outcry, and a shutting up of shops." The excitement of the people was intense. Moment by moment the
tumult grew greater. "Broussel! Broussel!" they shouted. That perilous populace had arisen which was
afterwards to show what frightful deeds it could do under the impulse of oppression and misgovernment.

Paul de Gondi, afterwards known as Cardinal De
[235] Retz, then coadjutor of the Archbishop of Paris, and the leading spirit with the populace, hurried to the
palace, accompanied by Marshal de la Meilleraie.

"The city is in a frightful state," they told the queen. "The people are furious and may soon grow
unmanageable. The air is full of revolt."

Anne of Austria listened to them with set lips and angry eyes.

"There is revolt in imagining there can be revolt," she sternly replied. "These are the ridiculous stories of
those who favor trouble; the king's authority will soon restore order."

M. de Guitant, an old courtier, who entered as she was speaking, declared that the coadjutor had barely
represented the facts, and said that he did not see how anybody could sleep with things in such a state.

"Well, M. de Guitant, and what is your advice?" asked De Retz.

"My advice is to give up that old rascal of a Broussel, dead or alive."

"To give him up dead," said the coadjutor, "would not accord with either the piety or the prudence of the
queen; to yield him alive might quiet the people."

The queen turned to him a face hot with anger, and exclaimed,—

"I understand you, Mr. Coadjutor; you would have me set Broussel at liberty. I would strangle him with these
hands first!" As she finished these
[236] words she put her hands close to the coadjutor's face, and added, in a threatening tone, "And those who—" Her
voice ceased; he was left to infer the rest.

Yet, despite this infatuation of the queen, it was evident that something must be done, if Paris was to be
saved. The people grew more tumultuous. Fresh tidings continued to come in, each more threatening than the
last. The queen at length yielded so far as to promise that Broussel should be set free if the people would
first disperse and cease their tumultuous behavior.

The coadjutor was bidden to proclaim this in the streets. He asked for an order to sustain him, but the queen
refused to give it, and withdrew "to her little gray room," angry at herself for yielding so far as she had.

De Retz did not find the situation a very pleasant one for himself. Mazarin pushed him gently towards the
door, saying, "Restore the peace of the realm." Marshal Meilleraie drew him onward. He went into the street,
wearing his robe of office, and bestowing benedictions right and left, though while doing so his mind was busy
in considering how he was going to get out of the difficulty which lay before him.

It grew worse instead of better. Marshal Meilleraie, losing his head through excitement, advanced waving his
sword in the air, and shouting at the top of his voice,—

"Hurrah for the king! Liberation for Broussel!"

[237] This did very well for those within hearing; but his sword provoked far more than his voice quieted; those at
a distance looked on his action as a menace, and their fury was augmented. On all sides there was a rush for
arms. Stones were flung by the rioters, one of which struck De Retz and felled him to the earth. As he picked
himself up an excited youth rushed at him and put a musket to his head. Only the wit and readiness of the
coadjutor saved him from imminent peril.

"Though I did not know him a bit," says De Retz, in his "Memoirs," "I thought it would not be well to let him
suppose so at such a moment; on the contrary, I said to him, 'Ah, wretch, if thy father saw thee!' He thought
I was the best friend of his father, on whom, however, I had never set eyes."

The fellow withdrew, ashamed of his violence, and before any further attack could be made upon De Retz he was
recognized by the people and dragged to the market-place, constantly crying out as he went, "The queen has
promised to restore Broussel."

The good news by this time had spread through the multitude, whose cries of anger were giving place to shouts
of joy. Their arms were hastily disposed of, and a great throng, thirty or forty thousand in number, followed
the coadjutor to the Palais-Royal. When he entered, Marshal Meilleraie turned to the queen and said,—

"Madame,
[238] here is he to whom I owe my life, and your Majesty the safety of the Palais-Royal."

The queen's answer was an incredulous smile. On seeing it, the hasty temper of the marshal broke out in an
oath.

"Madame," he said, hotly, "no proper man can venture to flatter you in the state in which things are; and if
you do not this very day set Broussel at liberty, to-morrow there will not be left one stone upon another in
Paris."

Anne of Austria, carried away by her pride and superciliousness, could not be brought to believe that the
populace would dare attempt an actual revolt against the king. De Retz would have spoken in support of the
marshal's words, but she cut him short, saying in a tone of mockery,—

"Go and rest yourself, sir; you have worked very hard."

He left the palace in a rage. It was increased when word was brought to him that he had been ridiculed at the
supper-table of the queen. She had gone so far as to blame him for increasing the tumult, and threatened to
make an example of him and to interdict the Parliament. In short, the exercise of power had made the woman
mad. De Retz reflected. If the queen designed to punish him, she should have something to punish him for. He
was not the man to be made a cat's-paw of.

"We are not in such bad case as you suppose, gentlemen," he said to his friends. "There is an intention of
crushing the public; it is for me to
[239] defend it from oppression; to-morrow before mid-day I shall be master of Paris."

Anne of Austria had made an enemy of one who had been her strong friend, a bold and restless man, capable of
great deeds. He had long taken pains to make himself popular in Paris. During that night he and his emissaries
worked in secret upon the people. Early the next day the mob was out again, arms in hand, and ripe for
mischief. The chancellor, on his way to the Palace of Justice, suddenly found his carriage surrounded by these
rioters. He hastily sought refuge in the Hôtel de Luynes. The mob followed him, pillaging as they went,
destroying the furniture, seeking the fugitive. He had taken refuge in a small chamber, where, thinking that
his last hour had come, he knelt in confession before his brother, the Bishop of Meaux. Fortunately for him
the rioters failed to discover him, and were led away by another fancy.

"It was like a sudden and violent conflagration lighted up from the Pont Neuf over the whole city," says De
Retz. "Everybody without exception took up arms. Children of five and six years of age were seen dagger in
hand, and the mothers themselves carried them. In less than two hours there were in Paris more than two
hundred barricades, bordered with flags and all the arms that the League had left entire. Everybody cried
'Hurrah, for the king!' but echo answered, 'None of your Mazarin!'"

It was an incipient revolution, but it was the
[240] minister and the regent, not the king, against whom the people had risen, its object being the support of the
Parliament of Paris, not the States General of the kingdom. France was not yet ready for the radical work
reserved for a later day. The turbulent Parisians were in the street, arms in hand, but they had not yet lost
the sentiment of loyalty to the king. A century and a half more of misrule were needed to complete this
transformation in the national idea.

While all this was going on, the coadjutor, the soul of the outbreak, kept at home, vowing that he was
powerless to control the people. At an early hour the Parliament assembled at the Palace of Justice, but its
deliberations were interrupted by shouts of "Broussel! Broussel!" from the immense multitude which filled
every adjoining avenue. Only the release of the arrested members could appease the mob. The Parliament
determined to go in a body and demand this of the queen.

Their journey was an eventful one. Paris was in insurrection. Everywhere they found the people in arms, while
barricades were thrown up at every hundred paces. Through the shouting and howling mob they made their way to
the queen's palace, the ushers in front, with their square caps, the members following in their robes, at
their head M. Molé, their premier president.

The conference with the queen was a passionate one. M. Molé spoke for the Parliament, representing to the
queen the extreme danger Paris was
[241] in, the peril to all France, unless the prisoners were released and the sedition allayed. He spoke to a woman
"who feared nothing because she knew but little," and who was just then controlled by pride and passion
instead of reason.

"I am quite aware that there is a disturbance in the city," she answered, furiously; "but you shall answer to
me for it, gentlemen of the Parliament, you, your wives, and your children."

With further threats that the king would remember the cause of these evils, when he reached his majority, the
incensed woman flouted from the chamber of audience, slamming the door violently behind her. To deal with her,
in her present mood, was evidently impracticable. The members left the palace to return. They quickly found
themselves surrounded by an angry mob, furious at their non-success, disposed to hold them responsible for the
failure. On their arrival at the Rue St. Honoré, just as they were about to turn on to the Pont Neuf, a band
of about two hundred men advanced threateningly upon them, headed by a cook-shop lad, armed with a halberd,
which he thrust against M. Molé's body, crying,—

"Turn, traitor, and if thou wouldst not thyself be slain, give up to us Broussel, or Mazarin and the
chancellor as hostages."

Molé quietly put the weapon aside.

"You forget yourself," he said, with calm dignity, "and are oblivious of the respect you owe to my office."

[242] The mob, however, was past the point of paying respect to dignitaries. They hustled the members, threatened
the president with swords and pistols, and several times tried to drag him into a private house. But he
resisted, and was aided by members and friends who surrounded him. Slowly the parliamentary body made its way
back to the Palais-Royal, whither they had resolved to return, M. Molé preserving his dignity of mien and
movement, despite the "running fire of insults, threats, execrations, and blasphemies," that arose from every
side. They reached the palace, at length, in diminished numbers, many of the members having dropped out of the
procession.

The whole court was assembled in the gallery. Molé spoke first. He was a man of great natural eloquence, who
was at his best as an orator when surrounded by peril, and he depicted the situation so graphically that all
present, except the queen, were in terror. "Monsieur made as if he would throw himself upon his knees before
the queen, who remained inflexible," says De Retz; "four or five princesses, who were trembling with fear, did
throw themselves at her feet; the queen of England, who had come that day from St. Germain, represented that
the troubles had never been so serious at their commencement in England, nor the feelings so heated or
united."

Paris, in short, was on the eve of a revolution, and the queen could not be made to see it. Cardinal Mazarin,
who was present, and who had been
[243] severely dealt with in the speeches, some of the orators telling him, in mockery, that if he would only go as
far as the Pont Neuf he would learn for himself how things were, now joined the others in entreating Anne of
Austria to give way. She did so at length, consenting to the release of Broussel, though "not without a deep
sigh, which showed what violence she did her feelings in the struggle."

CATHEDRALOF NOTRE DAME. PARIS.

It is an interesting spectacle to see this woman, moved by sheer pride and obstinacy, conjoined with ignorance
of the actual situation, seeking to set her single will against that of a city in revolt, and endangering the
very existence of the monarchy by her sheer lack of reason. Her consent, for the time being, settled the
difficulty, though the passions which had been aroused were not easily to be set at rest. Broussel was
released and took his seat again in the Parliament, and the people returned to their homes, satisfied, for the
time, with their victory over the queen and the cardinal.

In truth, a contest had arisen which was yet to yield important consequences. The Prince of Condé had arrived
in Paris during these events. He had the prestige of a successful general; he did not like the cardinal, and
he looked on the Parliament as imprudent and insolent.

"If I should join hands with them," he said to De Retz, "it might be best for my interests, but my name is
Louis de Bourbon, and I do not wish to shake the throne. These devils of square-caps, are they mad about
bringing me either to commence a
[244] civil war, or to put a rope round their own necks? I will let them see that they are not the potentates they
think themselves, and that they may easily be brought to reason."

"The cardinal may possibly be mistaken in his measures," answered De Retz. "He will find Paris a hard nut to
crack."

"It will not be taken, like Dunkerque, by mining and assaults," retorted the prince, angrily; "but if the
bread of Gonesse were to fail them for a week—" He left the coadjutor to imagine the consequences.

The contest continued. In January, 1649, the queen, the boy king, and the whole court set out by night for the
castle of St. Germain. It was unfurnished, with scarcely a bundle of straw to lie upon, but the queen could
not have been more gay "had she won a battle, taken Paris, and had all who had displeased her hanged, and
nevertheless she was very far from all that."

Far enough, indeed. Paris was in the hands of her enemies, who were as gay as the queen. On the 8th of January
the Parliament of Paris decreed Cardinal Mazarin an enemy to the king and the state, and bade all subjects of
the king to hunt him down. War was declared against the queen regent and her favorite, the cardinal. Had it
been the States-General in place of the Parliament, the French Revolution might have then and there begun.

Many of the greatest lords joined the side of the
[245] people. Troops were levied in the city, their command being offered to the Prince of Conti. The Parliaments
of Aix and Rouen voted to support that of Paris. It was decreed that all the royal funds, in the exchequers of
the kingdom, should be seized and used for the defence of the people. All was festivity in the city. The
versatile people seemed to imagine that to declare war was to decree victory. There was dancing everywhere
within the walls. There was the rumble of war without. The Prince of Condé, at the head of the king's troops,
had taken the post of Charentin from the Frondeurs, as the malcontents called themselves, and had carried out
his threat of checking the flow of bread to the city. The gay Parisians were beginning to feel the
inconvenience of hunger.

What followed is too long a story to be told here, except in bare epitome. A truce was patched up between the
contending parties. Bread flowed again into Paris. The seared and hungry people grew courageous and violent
again when their appetites were satisfied. When M. Molé and his fellows returned to Paris with a treaty of
peace which they had signed, the populace gathered round them in fury.

"None of your peace! None of your Mazarin!" they angrily shouted. "We must go to St. Germain to seek our good
king! We must fling into the river all the Mazarins."

One of them laid his hand threateningly on President Molé's arm. The latter looked him in the face calmly.

[246] "When you have killed me," he said, quietly, "I shall only need six feet of earth."

"You can get back to your house secretly by way of the record offices," whispered one of his companions.

"The court never hides itself," he composedly replied. "If I were certain to perish, I would not commit this
poltroonery, which, moreover, would but give courage to the rioters. They would seek me in my house if they
thought I shrank from them here."

M. Molé was a man of courage. To face a mob is at times more dangerous than to face an army.

Paris was in disorder. The agitation was spreading all over France. But the army was faithful to the king, and
without it the Fronde was powerless. The outbreak had ended in a treaty of peace and amnesty in which the
Parliament had in a measure won, as it had preserved all its rights and privileges.

It was to be a short peace. Condé, elated by having beaten the Fronde, claimed a lion's share in the
government. His brother, the Prince of Conti, and his sister, the Duchess of Longueville, joined him in these
pretensions. The affair ended in a bold step on the part of Mazarin and the queen. The two princes and M. de
Longueville were arrested and conveyed to the castle of Vincennes, while the princesses were ordered to retire
to their estates, and the Duchess of Longueville, fearing arrest, fled in haste to Normandy.

For the present the star of the cardinal was in
[247] the ascendant. But his master-stroke set war on foot again. The Parliament of Paris supported the princes.
Their partisans rallied. Bordeaux broke into insurrection. Elsewhere hot blood declared itself. The Duke of
Orleans joined the party of the prisoners. The Parliament enjoined all the officers of the crown to obey none
but the duke, the lieutenant-general of the kingdom. On the night of February 6, 1651, Mazarin set out again
for St. Germain. Paris had become far too hot to hold him.

The tidings of his flight brought the people into the streets again. The Duke of Orleans informed Cardinal de
Retz that the queen proposed to follow her flying minister, with the boy king.

"What is to be done?" he asked, somewhat helplessly. "It is a bad business; but how are we to stop it?"

"How?" cried the more practical De Retz; "why, by shutting the gates of Paris, to begin with. The king must
not go."

Within an hour the emissaries of the ready coadjutor were rousing up the people right and left with the
tidings of the projected flight of the queen with her son. Soon the city swarmed again with armed and angry
men, the gates were seized, mounted guards patrolled the streets, the crowd surged towards the Palais-Royal.

Within the palace all was alarm and confusion. Anne of Austria had indeed been on the point of flight. Her son
was in his travelling-dress. But
[248] the people were at the door, clamoring to see the king, threatening dire consequences if the doors were not
opened to them. They could not long be kept out; some immediate action must be taken. The boy's
travelling-attire was quickly replaced by his night dress, and he was laid in bed, his mother cautioning him
to lie quiet and feign sleep.

"The king! we must see the king!" came the vociferous cry from the street. "Open! the people demand to see
their king."

The doors were forced; the mob was in the palace; clamor and tumult reigned below the royal chambers. The
queen sent word to the people that the king was asleep in his bed. They might enter and see him if they would
promise to tread softly and keep strict silence. This message at once stopped the tumult; the noise subsided;
the people began to file into the room, stepping as noiselessly as though shod with down, gazing with awed
eyes on the seemingly sleeping face of the boy king.

The queen stood at the pillow of her son, a graceful and beautiful woman, her outstretched arm holding back
the heavy folds of the drapery, her face schooled to quiet repose. Louis lay with closed eyes and regular
breathing, playing his part well. For hours a stream of the men and women of Paris flowed through the chamber,
moving in reverential silence, gazing on the boy's face as on a sacred treasure of their own. Till three
o'clock in the morning the movement continued, the queen standing all this time like a beautiful statue, her
son
[249] still feigning slumber. It was a scene of remarkable and picturesque character.

That night of strain and excitement passed. The king was with them still, of that the people were assured; he
must remain with them, there must be an end of midnight flights. The patrol was kept up, the gates watched,
the king was a prisoner in the hands of the Parisians.

"The king, our master, is a captive," said M. Molé, voicing to the Parliament the queen's complaint.

"He was a captive, in the hands of Mazarin," replied the Duke of Orleans; "but, thank God, he is so no
longer."

The people had won. Mazarin was beaten. He hastened to La Havre, where the princes were then confined, and set
them at liberty himself. His power in France, for the time, was at an end. He made his way to the frontier,
which he crossed on the 12th of March. He was just in time: the Parliament of Paris had issued orders for his
arrest, wherever found in France.

We must end here, with this closing of the contest between Mazarin and the Fronde. History goes on to tell
that the contest was reopened, Mazarin returned, there was battle in Paris, the Fronde failed, and Mazarin
died in office.

The popular outbreak here briefly chronicled is of interest from the fact that it immediately followed the
success of the insurrection in England and the execution of Charles I. The provocation was the
[250] same in the two nations; the result highly different. In both cases it was a revolt against the tyranny of
the court and the attempt to establish absolutism. But the difference in results lay in the fact that England
had a single parliament, composed of politicians, while France had ten parliaments, composed of magistrates,
and unaccustomed to handle great questions of public policy. Richelieu had taken from the civic parliaments of
France what little power they possessed, and they were but shadowy prototypes of the English representative
assembly. "Without any unity of action or aim, and by turns excited and dismayed by the examples that came to
them from England, the Frondeurs had to guide them no Hampden or Cromwell; they had at their backs neither
people nor army; the English had been able to accomplish a revolution; the Fronde failed before the dexterous
prudence of Mazarin and the queen's fidelity to her minister."

There lay before France a century and a half of autocratic rule and popular suffering; then was to come the
convening of the States-General, the rise of the people, and the final downfall of absolute royalty and feudal
privileges in the red tide of the Revolution.

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